A vehicle's wheel suspension system plays a vital role in both serving to isolate the occupants of the vehicle from the irregularities of the road surface, and helping to control the stability of the vehicle by managing the relative position of the wheels to the vehicle body during the vehicle's operation. Suspension systems can take various forms, including, for example, a double wishbone suspension, a multi-link suspension, and an integral link suspension.
Integral link suspensions, for example, may have two joint elements, a rear joint element and a front joint element, between a four-point control arm (i.e., H-arm) and the wheel carrier (i.e., knuckle). The rear joint element is generally stiff in all spatial directions (X, Y and Z), while the front joint element only needs to be stiff in the vertical direction (Z). In conventional integral link suspensions, the front joint element is therefore generally configured such that it is particularly stiff in a direction parallel to a vertical axis of the vehicle (i.e., the Z axis), in comparison with the remaining two spatial directions (X and Y). For example, in one conventional suspension design, the front joint element is a rubber-elastic bushing, wherein the rubber material of the bushing has a substantially greater stiffness in the Z direction than in the X and Y directions. In another conventional suspension design, the front joint element is attached to an integral control arm, which forms an articulated connection between the transverse control arm (i.e., of the H-arm) and the wheel carrier. Both conventional designs, however, take up a large amount of space, and due to the number of necessary components for each joint configuration, increase the weight, and therefore the cost, of the wheel suspension.
It may, therefore, be advantageous to provide an integral link suspension design that requires less package space, while maintaining the good driving dynamics generally associated with such suspensions. It may also be advantageous to provide an integral link suspension that is lighter and less costly to manufacture.